Today, as you will have noticed from twitter, the UK government (Department of Culture, Media and Sport) has published “The Government’s response to Next Gen. Transforming the UK into the world’s leading talent hub for the video games and visual effects industries”.
The next gen report was originally written by Ian Livingstone and Alex Hope and is part of a ground swell of annoyance at the lack of proper technical education in schools due to the curriculum being filled with ICT which is “using” not “building”. Other reports have come out too from the government and with Google’s Eric Schmidt indicating in a major speech he felt the UK had too many luvvies and not enough boffins it really does need addressing.
The response in this new report does not exactly leap of the page calling for action. As with most government documents it is full of “welcoming comments”, “recognizing the issue” etc.
It does point to “lots” of after school clubs allowing various activities “However, the Department for Education is keen to encourage even more such clubs and looks forward to working with the sector to develop ways of achieving this.” yes that seems to be missing the point that these development skills for programming are actually core skills now, needed and lacking.
The report does sing the praises of Raspberry Pi as an ideal project and they seem to recognise that it is of use, though goes not further than that.
Equally in teaching the response is “The Government recognises the need for more high quality computer science teaching and will, over the next few months, be looking at the best ways to achieve this.”, but this is of course on the backdrop of a massive teaching strike over pensions this week.
I think the stand out quote though, and one that will be the seed for the beginning of any growth or change is
“However, the Government recognises that learning the skills to use ICT effectively and acquiring the knowledge of the underpinning computer science are two different (albeit complementary) subjects. Furthermore, the Government recognises that the current ICT programme is insufficiently rigorous and in need of reform.”
The rest of the report really is a lot of word play around not actually knowing what to do now they have spotted that.
Things move very slowly in politics, so hopefully armed with this information industry will step in to help. That of course leads to a two tier system of those that have the tech and those that do not. I was in a school that is sponsored by Apple last week. ipads and Macs everywhere, and more importantly being used to create and learn. We still have a long way to go but lets hope we can keep the next generation inspired long enough whilst the people with all the power get their act together.
future
Nobel Prize winning physics on kids TV – Graphene
In this weeks Cool Stuff Collective we ventured into some very high end and future thinking technology to talk about the centuries apparent wonder material Graphene. Initially I had this on a list of things to do but was not sure if it would work. Independently from my list the shows creator @marleyman007 said why are we not doing anything about Graphene. That was a very clear green light to give it a go.
Graphene has some amazing properties, it is an atom thin layer of carbon that is bonded into a hexagonal structure. It, like most things in science is a whole load of other variants but for the purposes of explaining it on the show we stuck to this structure.
Ros worked her producer magic again and managed to source this from Manchester. A real sample of graphene. The flecks in the postage stamp sized piece glass are single atomic layers of Graphene.
Yes you can see atoms.
We also tried to explain the potential strength of this formation of carbon by explaining if you had a clingfilm thin sheet of graphene it could support the weight of an elephant. Placing a cuddly toy elephant on a bowl covered with actual cling film.
It appears that graphene is super strong, light, thin, has interesting electrical properties, thermal conductive properties many of which that are continuing to be explored. Even the UK government is putting a little bit of research money into it!
I was very keen to add that this was not some random piece of science but that it was experiments on Graphene that won the 2010 Nobel prize for physics
There is lots to look at about graphene, and whilst it is looked down upon the Wikipedia article is a good place to get a starter feel for the depth of potential of this material.
I know some people get nervous of dismissive of “wonder materials” and world changing claims. We will of course have to wait and see, but it does seem to be a very positive step and one that our scientists of the future will be exploring further.
(I also found out that predlet 1.0 has actually talked about graphene in science at junior school which is brilliant news)
Lots of back catalogue versions of the show are still on the ITV player too.
Blippar Marmite – Product PackARging
The Blippar application on smartphones is an interesting development in Augmented Reality. It is using markers to determine what to show and where to show it in a magic lens configuration (sticking virtual over a real view of the world with your camera/screen). However the markers are not odd looking tags but merely the unique brand images from product packaging.
In this case it it detecting Marmite and providing some overlay recipes and information. What was good was that it was not an ordinary jar of marmite but an commercial tub (I buy in bulk !)
So if it sees a logo it has in its library then it initiates the AR experience.
Of course if you see an unusual marker with other AR or even just the simple QR codes you may be inspired to reach for your phone to view it, rather like seeing a text URL and typing it in. However as this gets more prevalent, maybe always on cameras looking for content for our headsup displays on out glasses or contact lenses then that becomes less of a barrier to entry.
There is of course an odd problem with this. What you are doing is replacing and obscuring the brand logo, the very thing you recognize, with some extra digital content. I hope there will be some more clever design (rather like on the 3DS AR games where the table becomes warped and morphed) that incorporate, not just replace/overlay the marker.
Still, its a massive change from a few years ago when AR couldn’t happen easily without people having lots of screens and cameras. Now, ordinary (yet still quite pricey) devices let us explore digital layers and see information that is not usually visible.
Don’t forget though AR is not just one layer on a real environment, there is lots of scope to use the principles and invent some very clever real/virtual mashups
Gaming CAVE – Omnidirectional Treadmills.
The guys over at the Gadget Show look like they have put some great tech together here with a Battlefield3 CAVE with position sensing gun and an omnidirectional treadmill.
There have been a few of these doing the rounds, quite often in the virtual world space. Of course hooking up to an high end, very popular commercial game is one of those things that elevates the tech to commercial interest.
Ways to move in space without moving are really the last piece in the jigsaw puzzle of interaction. If we move out bodies, as we do with kinect, we are still restricted by the fixed screen. Or we have to wear headset screens in which case we can move around and be sensed moving by are restricted by the physical space around us.
So unless everyone learns the mime walking against the wind gesture we need something a bit more fancy to allow us to walk naturally.
It looks like this setup has some other haptic feedback, probably with the compressed air bullet hit jacket.*Correction as pointed out by Uncommon below, its actually rigged to fire paintballs as the player for haptic feedback. It looks very cool and exciting!.
Talking careers, games, TV, BCS and Virtual worlds in 5 mins
At the Develop conference this year I was asked if I minded doing a quick interview for http://www.gamecareers.biz/ so I popped along and this is the result.
We had a very quick chat before and then we just blasted through in 1 take 🙂
I am in good company if you look at the actual site here
Between Colin Anderson of Denki and Mick Hocking of Sony.
The BCS and its role in careers may be of interest or resonate with some games industry people looking for some structure.
I am pleased with the points I got across too. Thanks to @davidsmithuk for putting this together and asking such good questions in the interview.
All in the aid of AR research
Here is another reason I should probably stick to using an avatar! This is AirBand on the Xbox Kinect. Which ever instrument you mime, guitar, drums or keyboard it picks up your position and lets you play the track (its kind of like a paperjamz guitar).
I hope mistsuzuki racing doesn’t mind the product placement of their shirt and logo in this piece 🙂
If you are having trouble with Kinect labs BTW, as it currently bluescreens for a lot of people then you can launch Air Band from the quicklaunch via the silver button menus, the save for Avatar Kinect.
I was trying to get footage of the predlets but they were getting so into it it was impossible to dive in and hit save on the video.
It is a pity you cant really play much in teh way of music it is a sequencer volume control, but can you imaging trying to do this 10 years ago? Brilliant fun and shows that AR doesn’t have to be all marketing and mapping
Expiranting on Nymwars with Avatar Kinect
Here is an experimental rant (expirant, of sorts) about Nymwars and why different identities are a choice we should be able to make. Using an avatar and a live recording starts to mix the virtual and physical. It is the same in any virtual world but I thought I would kill two birds (one real and one virtual) with a (mesh) stone and record something using Avatar Kinect which lets you use your body to puppet the avatar.
Just saying we should all have a direct tie to a physical face or name at all times it just plain silly. I guess most of us out here know that, but it has generated a lot of discussion on the web.
Real and Virtual game merging – 3D print armour?
I was just catching up on the gamescom content on Xbox Live and amongst all the variants of Call of Duty and other shooters there was a trailer for Skylander:Spyro Adventures
I must have missed this too in the E3 2011 press as it is an interesting evolution of the offline/online interactions in games. The game comes with physical toys, 3 or them who are characters from the game. They are amongst a large set of character collectibles. So unlike many games now with DLC that you buy to unlock new features, here you get a toy that act as your unlock. Now we have seen things where the to has a code on it to unlock features, kinectimals being the most recent and some of the pet virtual worlds with cuddly crossovers. This toy is, however, active. You place it on a peripheral base and that detects the toy, but the toy (or some online key combination with the specific instance of the toy) keeps its stats and experience. The aim being you can take you version of the toys to a friends has, and play on.
Again this is not totally new (what is!) as the old dreamcast version of Sonic had a Chao “Tamagotchi” in the VMU (a detachable battery pack/and LCD mini screen on the controller). That was of course a good few years ago, before we had such great connectivity and high end consoles.
The merging of online and offline and considering your brand and the experience as a real interlinked one is certainly a growing business direction in entertainment. Just take a look at how huge Moshi Monster has become (you can find mine at http://www.moshime.com/epredator). Much of this comes from the idea that things are experiences to be shared wherever you are. It is ironic that the video games that were once though to be isolationist, selfish experiences once connected to the internet have become a massive social movement with a knock on into what people might think of as regular product.
You can probably see too that the natural extension of this online/offline activity is for the online activity to create the offline for you with 3d Printing. It would be great with this Spyro example if after playing it was obvious you character had levelled up as you toy now had some new armour on it you got from your friends 3d printer after playing the game?
A very clever realtime 3d scanning using kinect
SIGRAPH 2011 always brings out some very interesting tech. I always think of it as being mainly high end very expensive leading edge graphics. This year though some researcher have provided something very cool and useful that side steps the expensive LIDAR scanning process to capture full 3d environments using just a (now) humble Kinect.
Point cloud data is often used to capture environments that already exist and then it is generally turned into a polygon mesh to be manipulated and re-rendered. Second Life is famously moving from its prim based display to start to allow these polygon meshes as that has been the traditional way yo show games graphics. However this is could all be up in the air a little with the guys at Euclideon who have this newer approach to rendering. Rather than polygons they use an atomic approach. it is really a 3d pixel or voxel.
So look out for Euclideon and their technology, it is an exciting time to see new and interesting ways for us to both create, interact and modify environments.
Both advances have implications for merging real and virtual spaces in either direction as part of augmented reality.
Inclusive gaming – An inspirational project
At Develop last month I got talking to the guys on the stand for the SpecialEffect loan library project 2011-2013. @SpecialEffect is a charity which aim to make all games accessible to everyone. The library aspect is to provide specialist controllers, emrging technology solution and software patches for young people with vary degrees of accessibility issues with games in particular.
SpecialEffect Loan Library Project from William Donegan on Vimeo.
The charity points out that many games can be too quick or difficult to play for many young people with disabilities. They aim to either provide new interfaces or changes to the games, or actually tell people which games already are playable with suitable settings for specific needs of a specific audience.
If you think about it this can be as easy as providing subtitling on dialogue to hearing impaired, or enough changes in speed and skill level to allow the game to still be enjoyable and a challenge.
On the stand there where examples of console games adjusted to take single oversize reactive button input, or shoot em ups that had context sensitive directions. It was very inspiring and thought provoking.
We have often talked about the affordances virtual worlds give us, a digital environment, haptic feedback etc all providing ways that anyone could interact. The reality though is that accessibility is not a focus of mainstream gaming, but Specialeffect are pushing the right direction.
There is also a games database called gamebase that indicates what features existing games already support to help people understand what can be done with them.
It is well worth checking out, and considering.